


Caught In the In Between of Beautiful Disaster

by backitup_baby



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 05:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backitup_baby/pseuds/backitup_baby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>After the end, there is nothing.</i> How Johanna Mason tries to start over with a little help from her friends. Written for the <a href="http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html">Girl on Fire Ficathon</a> at LJ, for <a href="http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html?thread=1170788#t1170788">this prompt</a>, featuring the OT3 of Johanna/Axe/Trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught In the In Between of Beautiful Disaster

**Author's Note:**

> There is a very brief and not explicit mention to Johanna's non-con torture in an italics section.

After the end, there is nothing.

Johanna packs a bag, tucking in the pine bundle Katniss’d given her inside first. There isn’t much else to add, and she can barely feel its weight when she swings the bag up onto her back. She stands there, in the bare compartment they’d shared, her hands opening and closing reflexively, wondering if she should…

_It’s supposed to be different, safe, better now, even though it’s only been a few days after the end. But if there’s anything that winning the 67th Hunger Games taught her, it’s that only idiots fail to have a few tricks up their sleeve._

… She deliberates for another half-minute before she heads to the armory to collect her axe, just in case. 

–

She boards a train to District 7. She doesn’t even know why she bothers. 

_Her family’s gone; Snow took care of that years ago, when he’d sold her to two brothers who’d wanted her for a night. She’d gotten back to her apartment only a few hours after leaving, her hands shaking and covered in blood. Half an hour later, the call had come from Snow, telling her to go home for the funerals._

It’s barely recognizable, home. She wonders if the trees, or what’s left of them, anyway, are having trouble placing her, too. She finds a house in remnants of the woods, near the broken dam, and tries to make do.

–

When the rain falls, she forces herself to go outside, naked, and do a cursory cleansing of her body. She tells herself that if it’s not coming from a machine, it won’t hurt her. 

_The night the rebels came for her, the Capitol’s soldiers been working her over again, slowly and deliberately. She can still feel their hands on her, in her, tight and slick with water._

One time, two men catch her this way. She tilts her head slightly in their direction, a sneer on her face, and picks up the axe she’d brought with her just in case. They continue on their way again quickly, and she drops the weapon and resumes her makeshift shower. 

Johanna tries to stay, because she has nowhere else to go, but being home encourages the splintered memories she’d shut out to worm their way back in. She wakes up in the middle of the night, repeatedly, gasping for breath and clawing at her own neck. 

–

She hears that Annie’s settled back in District 4. Her bag packed and the axe swinging loosely at her side, she boards another train and leaves the woods behind.

They were never friends, but circumstances have made it so they’re able to understand each other. It’s obvious from the start that Johanna can’t stay, though. Annie’s son has just started walking, and Johanna’s attachment to her axe has made it difficult for Annie to baby-proof.

_She remembers the first time she met Finnick, when they were 17 and 18, the year after she’d won her Games. He’d tried to warn her about Snow, what he would do if she didn’t comply. She didn’t listen. She should have listened._

The little boy has his father’s eyes, and whenever he looks at her, Johanna sees Finnick’s ghost next to him. 

She wonders how Annie can deal with it. She wonders whether Annie is stronger than she has ever been.

–

She thinks she’s almost run out of places to go when she finds it again. Pressing the pine bundle to her nose, she closes her eyes and breathes it in. 

_“The arena messed us up pretty good, don’t you think? Or do you still feel like the girl who volunteered for your sister?”_

It should have been obvious, she tells herself as she boards another train and sits down, feet sticking out into the aisle, her axe on the seat next to her. 

She steps off the train and looks around, taking it all in. There’s not much to see, but it feels more real than anywhere else she’s been in a while.

When she arrives, Peeta is outside the house, planting flowers. She sneaks up behind him and taps him on the shoulder, and he jumps and scatters soil everywhere.

_“Peeta and I had adjoining cells in the Capitol. We’re very familiar with each other’s screams.”_

“Johanna,” he says, squinting a little in the sunlight. 

“It’s me,” she agrees. 

He stands up and reaches a hand out, almost shyly, and she pulls him into a hug before she even realizes what she’s doing.

–

Their house looks a lot like Johanna’s old one did, back in District 7. She wonders if all the victors’ houses were built according to the same blueprint. 

Katniss is working on a book or something, and she closes it shut when she sees them both standing in the doorway. 

Johanna opens her mouth, then closes it again, not really knowing what to say. The silence settles between the three of them as they all stare at each other, and finally she finds some words she can use.

“Your firewood’s all wrong,” she says, pointing with her axe to the pile of lumber in the corner.

Katniss stands up and presses her lips together. The silence continues for a little while longer before Johanna realizes she’s trying to not laugh. “You think you know someone who could help us out?”

–

Johanna goes to bed that night, in Katniss and Peeta’s guest room. She keeps her axe on the nightstand, just in case, but the nightmares don’t come. 

The next day, Katniss takes her to the meadow and she finds enough in the surrounding woods to be able to restock the firewood.

The day after that, she and Peeta plant saplings next to the flowers. “Primroses,” he says, and that’s all she needs to hear. She takes a step back, counts three saplings next to the garden, then opens her mouth, wondering if she should tell him that the saplings are for her family. She closes it, though, deciding not to ruin this moment with the past. Instead Johanna nods a little, a strange feeling coming over her -- almost like satisfaction.

Somehow, she’s found her way home.


End file.
